Stuff about Yakuza

When I played Yakuza Kiwami 2 I said “I’m definitely not going to leave it as long to play Yakuza 3”. That was a year and three months ago! It’s technically true though, I did try to play Yakuza 3 remastered quite a while ago but found it a real slog. The games I had played leading up to this one were the “Kiwami” remakes in a new engine. Yakuza 3 was the first game I played in its original form. The fighting was very frustrating, lacking the depth of the previous entries I had played. All the enemies seemed to block every attack without much opportunity to do anything about it as well. Recently Sega released this version, a proper ground-up remake of 3.

This is a remake of the second Yakuza game, but it is the third game chronologically. I completed Yakuza 0 about the same time last year and very much enjoyed it. I also played the original Kiwami game years ago. I think this series has absolutely clicked with me now. I thought this was great.

I just finished Yakuza 0 on the Steam Deck. You play as Kazuma Kiryu who gets accused of a murder he didn’t commit, and Goro Majima who is being forced to run a cabaret club and is not allowed to leave his city. The game is really long, both characters’ stories could be a stand-alone game. They end up tying together in an interesting way I didn’t see coming though.